What next for George Bush? De-worming, that’s the future!

George Bush is no doubt contemplating what to do in his well-deserved retirement. He might clear some more brush on his family ranch in Texas — an occupation which he is fanatical about apparently (at least according to Laura Bush and Jay Leno). And no doubt the presidential memoirs will need some hard work.

But he might want to take a leaf out of Jimmy Carter’s book, and get to grips with the Guinea worm, a nasty piece of nature’s work (pictures here). The thin white parasitic worm bores holes through you, before emerging — very painfully — to go on to infect others. It is a major blight on the lives of poor people in West Africa. The disability caused by the disease is seasonal, often returning around harvest time, making it the “the disease of the empty granary.” Ex-President Carter, now in his 84th year, has been working to eradicate the Guinea worm for over two decades (see FT story).

Reducing the impact of the Guinea worm is one of development’s success stories (George: read this, it’s quite short). There were 50 million cases in the 1950s according to WHO. In 1986 some 3.5 million in 20 countries were still infected. That’s down to fewer than 13,000 today in the remaining five countries where the disease is still prevalent: Sudan (where Carter convinced belligerents to agree to a six-month “Guinea worm ceasefire” in 1995 to get eradication started) as well as Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Niger.

So, George, it could be so much more interesting than clearing brush wood. Or editing those memoirs.